FIG. 1 represents a typical arrangement of customers and suppliers engaging in transactions electronically. Various suppliers 3 make their products and services available electronically via supplier servers 3a. Users, or customers, communicate electronically with the suppliers 3 using personal computers 1 or computer terminals 2 (which can also be personal computers) connected as part of a local area network (LAN) 4. These personal computers 1 and computer terminals 2 generally have access to a printing apparatus that will print data when the user requests such printing. In the case of a personal computer 1, the printing apparatus 6 is generally directly connected to the personal computer, while in the case of a computer terminal 2 in a LAN 4, the computer terminal 2 is generally connected to a shared printing apparatus 6a via the LAN 4. Printing only takes place when a user manually requests that data be printed.
Increasingly, customers are purchasing more and more of the products and services they desire through suppliers making their products available through electronic transactions performed in the environment displayed in FIG. 1. These transactions should be recorded and tracked in order to ensure that customers receive the goods and services that they have purchased. Such tracking is commonly accomplished through the generation of confirmation numbers by the suppliers 3 which allow customers to track the status of their purchases and serve as a confirmation that a transaction actually took place. It is desirable necessary to communicate such records generated by the suppliers to users so that users can maintain a record of their electronic transactions.
Several methods are used to communicate this information to users presently. In one method, record information is generated, e-mailed to the user and then manually printed by the user via a manual direction to print the record on a printing apparatus on the user side of the communication. In another method, the record information is printed as result of an instruction on the supplier side of the communication, with the paper copy of the record being mailed to the user subsequently. Alternatively, the transaction record can be transmitted directly to the user as part of the information displayed on the user screen. The information can then be printed by the user using a manual request to print the data on the screen. The common problem shared by all of these methods, is that they are all subject to error when either the user or supplier fails to manually request printing of the transaction information. If no manual request to print is made, the transaction information may be lost and users would be left with no record of their transaction.